


Who's Left and Who's Leaving

by KimBug



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Set season 3, olicity - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 10:38:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18259577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KimBug/pseuds/KimBug
Summary: Nearly a year ago, Felicity left Starling for a life in Coast City with Ray. Now a business trip brings her back to her old city, but it's something else that's pulling her back to her old life.Set circa season 3. And oldie but a goodie posted on ff.net back in the day.





	1. Chapter 1

Oliver will never forget the night Felicity told him she was leaving.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise.  Things between them hadn’t been the easiest since their disastrous first, and only, date.  Since Oliver pushed her away.  But she’s stayed, helping his cause with as much dedication as ever despite the wedge between them, and part of him must have been convinced that she would never leave, even though she had told him outright that she wouldn’t wait for him, that she wanted more out of her life than crime fighting from a basement.  But when she told him, told him that Ray Palmer was leaving for Coast City and that she was going with him, it was a shock.

He remembers the tears in her eyes, knows there were tears in his eyes too.  She walked over to him, where he was standing stock still and mouth open not knowing what to say, she put her hands on his chest and reached up to kiss his cheek.  She told him, “I’ll always believe in you Oliver” her voice soft, just above a whisper.  She gave him one last sad smile, then turned and walked away, out of the foundry, out of his life.  When the door slammed shut behind her, he cried.

It was better this way, that’s what he kept telling himself anyway.  It didn’t matter that he felt like an empty shell, felt that part of him was missing.  He couldn’t be with her, she deserved to be happy, this was for the best.  And after days, weeks, months of telling himself that, he actually started to believe it.  He learned to function without her, the team learned to function without her.  Diggle took up her post, as best as he could.  She helped John when he needed it, taught him what she could, Oliver knew the two were still in touch, but she never talked to him, and he didn’t talk to her.  It was easier that way.

Without really knowing how it happened, Oliver fell back into bed with Laurel.  She was there, he felt empty, they fell into an old pattern.  Laurel was a lot less romantic about it now.  Oliver was simultaneously glad about it (because he couldn’t offer her anything more, he couldn’t offer her a real relationship) and sad that she had become so jaded.  At least he wasn’t lying to her this time.

On the surface, Oliver’s life post Felicity was very much life his life before.  He fought crime as the Arrow, he ran Verdant with Thea, and spent way too much of his free time in the basement hiding from his feelings.  But on the inside, it was like all the colour of life had dulled, faded.  And the longer Oliver looked at life that way, the more normal it became, to see life without colour.  It was how he moved on, to ignore what was missing, and he managed it for almost a year. 

Until the day Felicity came back.


	2. Chapter 2

Felicity could see it in the distance, a spot of bright light breaking through the darkness.  She knew without having to be told that it was Starling City.  And as the plane got closer, and the large point of light started to fragment into thousands of points of light, butterflies erupted in her stomach.  This had been her city.  She had watched over it for years, from above and below, from every angle.  It had been her city, and she left it.  That was almost a year ago, and she hasn’t been back.

It was the hardest decision she ever had to make.  Ray was leaving.  Together they had made the ATOM suit and, after field testing it in Starling, Ray had decided that to really make the most of it, they should be at the Palmer Technologies Laboratory in Coast City.  It was the most high tech lab in the country, he had told her, imagine what they could do with its resources.

But it was more than that.  She was sleeping with him.  She was sleeping with him and she knew she had feelings for him, but so many times after being with Ray, she would have to slip away to the Arrow cave and she would see Oliver.  And her feelings, which she thought were so clear when she was with Ray, would get all muddy.  How could she be with one while loving the other?

Oliver wouldn’t be with her.  He could tell her he loved her, he could kill for her, and she was almost certain he would die for her.  But he wouldn’t be with her.  And despite telling herself, despite telling him, that that wasn’t enough for her, as long as she saw his face, as long as she heard him say her name, she knew she would never let him go.  So when Ray said he was leaving and asked her to go along, she agreed.  Because not only did she believe in the ATOM project, but because her and Ray deserved a shot, a real shot, which they would never have in the shadow of Oliver Queen.

Felicity moved to Coast City and built a life there.  She lived in a ridiculously expensive penthouse apartment with Ray, she spent her days doing some amazing science at Palmer Labs, she was making friends, and she was part of the support team for the ATOM project.  Ray had basically turned the whole lab into a base of operations for the ATOM and, since Ray Palmer seemed to be incapable of thinking small, he expanded the project’s mandate.  “Why stop at one city,” he had said, “when we can help the world?” 

The ATOM was helping people all over the globe, freeing the oppressed, stopping war lords, it was heroism on a grand scale.  What wasn’t there to like in Felicity’s new life?

So what if the shiny new lab where she spent 80% of her time didn’t feel like home, not like the dark, damp basement under Verdant did?  She pushed that feeling aside.

And that feeling of disappointment she got sometimes, when she would push against Ray and he didn’t push back?  She told herself that it was ridiculous.  He valued her opinions, he always took her advice, never questioned that she was looking out for his best interests.  That was good, wasn’t it?  They didn’t need that kind of spark.

And if, right now, seeing Starling City again for the first time in nearly a year made her feel like some missing piece of herself was being clicked back into place?  Well, she’d ignore that too.  Because this wasn’t her life anymore.  She’d built a new one, across the country, and it was better this way.

Felicity told herself that so many times, she almost believed it.  Until she saw Oliver Queen again.  Then it all went out the window.


	3. Chapter 3

Felicity had given up a lot of things when she moved to Coast City with Ray.  She left her house (it was small and modest, but it had been hers, she’s worked hard for it and she loved it), her friends, her work with Team Arrow.  But there was one thing Felicity refused to give up, the one part of her adopted family that she knew she couldn’t be without: John Diggle.

Felicity had to let go of Oliver, that was the point of her moving on after all.  And while she loved Roy like a brother, she didn’t want to put herself between him and Oliver.  But John, she wouldn’t, she couldn’t, let him go.  So they talked.  It was mostly over email, sometimes over Skype.  Sometimes it was about the crime fighting business, sometimes it was just about life.  They talked, but she hadn’t seen him, not for real, not in the flesh, since she left.  When he found out she was coming back to Starling to oversee some work at the Palmer Tech office, he suggested they meet.  Felicity wondered, briefly, if it was a good idea, if it would put her too close to her old life.  But then he mentioned baby Sara, and she was lost.  And that’s how she found herself pushing a giggling toddler in a swing one warm afternoon in a park near the Glades.

“Does she ever get tired of this?”  Felicity asked, glancing back over her shoulder at Diggle who was sitting on a nearby bench.

He gave her a sly smile.  “Not really.  Now you know why I got you to push the swing.”

Felicity huffed out a laugh.  “Well, that’s ok. I could do this all day.  Right Sara?”  She made a face at Sara as she swung back towards her.  Sara clapped her hands and squealed.

“You’re here for 2 weeks, right?” Diggle asked her.

Felicity nodded.

“Maybe you can come by for dinner one night.  I know Lyla would love to see you.”

"Sure,” Felicity told him, still pushing the swing in a steady rhythm.

Digg was quiet for a minute before adding, “You should stop by the foundry one night too.  I know everyone would be happy to see you.”

Felicity started at the suggestion.  She tried to hide her reaction, but knows she didn’t manage it since she missed a push to Sara’s swing.

“Maybe,” she answered, noncommittally. 

“Well, you know where to find us if you want to come by,” he said.

She shrugged, then tried to make a joke.  “Yeah, but you must have changed the locks by now.”  Felicity always insisted they change the pass code at least every six months for security purposes.

“Nope,” he said, and she turned to him with a quizzical look.  It was his turn to shrug.  “We wanted to make sure you could always come back again,” he told her.  And for one of the few times in her life, Felicity didn’t know what to say.

She hadn’t planned on going to Verdant, she never consciously made the decision.  But a few days after seeing Diggle, after a very long, very tiring day at Palmer Tech, she got in her car and started to drive and before she knew it, she was there.  She’d driven on autopilot, from the office to the club, like she’d done a thousand times before.  She wondered, for a minute, if she should go in or not.  But she knew that where she was parked was in the line of sight of one of security cameras she had installed (that was done on instinct too, Digg and Oliver had always insisted on it) and it was likely that someone already knew she was there.  So she got out of her car and she walked towards the door and the closer she got, the more excited she felt.  By the time she punched in the security code (she still remembered it) and the door clicked open, she had a full blown smile on her face.

Her heels clacked on the metal steps in a familiar rhythm, and the air had the expected twinge of dampness.  It felt just the same as the last time she was there, her year away didn’t make it feel strange or foreign.  She tried not to think too hard about what that meant.

It was quiet when she got down the steps and she felt a twinge of disappointment when she realized the lair was almost empty.  Only her chair was occupied, well, what used to be her chair.  Diggle turned to face her, a smile on his face, and a look in his eye that said maybe he was expecting her.

“Welcome back,” he told her.

“Thanks for the invitation,” she answered, eyes scanning the space, logging the subtle changes that had happened since she left.

“You never need an invitation to come here Felicity,” he said.  She didn’t know how to respond to that, so she changed the subject.

“The boys are out on a mission?” she asked, noting the empty dummies that usually held the Arrow and Arsenal costumes.

“Yeah,” Digg answered.  “Laurel too.  Stolen military ordinance is coming into the docks tonight.”  He slid his chair over and she could see a satellite image of the docks on the screen.  Before Felicity left, she had opened portals to both the ARGUS and Star Labs satellites to give Team Arrow easy access.  “Want to listen in?” he offered.

“Sure,” she answered, and Digg handed her a comm unit.  She put it in hear ear but didn’t activate the microphone.  Then she pulled up a chair and sat in front of the monitors, near enough to see but removed enough to give Diggle space to run the operation.  This wasn’t her show anymore, she was just an observer.

For the first few minutes, there was radio silence.  Then she heard a voice, heard _his_ voice, for the first time in almost a year.

“We’re at the docks,” Oliver said.  “Getting into position now.”

It was gruff and clipped, it was the voice Oliver used with his vigilante persona.  It was exactly as Felicity remembered it, and it made her heart skip a beat.

“Roger that,” Diggle acknowledged.  “You’re coming up on the satellite feed now.”

Felicity could see that too, a red circle, a black circle and a green circle all crept onto the computer screen, all from different directions but converging towards the same point.  The area looked quiet, with only a few spots of light that indicated people.  With the three of them, it would be no problem to take the hostiles out. 

Then everything started to go wrong.

In the blink of an eye and seemingly out of nowhere, more spots of light started to fill the screen.  People, probably hostiles, were coming in from all directions.  Felicity tensed and sat straighter in the chair.

“You’ve got company,” Diggle said into the comms, “coming in from multiple angles.”

There was no answer.

“Arrow acknowledge,” said Diggle.  Then louder.  “Arrow? Arsenal? Canary?”

Still nothing.  Then the satellite feed scrambled and disappeared.

“We’ve lost the link,” Diggle said, punching a few keys on the keyboard.

“And the comms,” Felicity answered, and before she even thought about what she was doing, she moved herself in front of the computer.  Digg wordlessly moved out of her way.

“Something is probably scrambling the signal,” she said, fingers flying over the keyboard.  “I’ll move our communications to another frequency, see if I can find one that’s clear.” 

“Are they scrambling the satellite feed too?” Digg asked.

“No,” she answered, shaking her head a little.  “I think that was just bad luck.  We lost the portal.  I’ll try to hack in again.”

Felicity clicked on her microphone.  “Arrow, can you hear me?”

She switched frequencies a few times, repeating her question, before hearing a crackle of static and an almost whispered “Felicity?”

She could hear the surprise in his voice, but this wasn’t the time for explanations.  “Digg and I have lost the satellite feed, but before we did it showed multiple bodies converging on your target.  Be careful.”

No sooner had she gotten the words out then the sound of gunfire could be heard through her ear piece.  She could hear Oliver talking to Roy and Laurel, coordinating their approach, but for the most part she blocked it out and focused instead on getting the satellite image back.  Once she did, she was able to direct the team, warn them of incoming threats so they weren’t caught off guard.  Even with being outnumbered, team Arrow won the day, rounding up weapons and bad guys and leaving them in a neat little bundle for the police to handle.  And then they were on their home.

Suddenly, Felicity didn’t know what to do with herself.  She got up from her chair, Digg’s chair now, in front of the computers and stood awkwardly for long enough that Digg took pity on her and asked if they could go over some of the programs she had created.  She welcomed the distraction.

When she heard the foundry door open, Felicity turned around reflexively and her nerves kicked up a notch and she found herself wondering if it was such a great idea for her to come here in the first place.  But then Roy was bounding down the stairs, hood pushed back and mask dangling around his neck, and he bee-lined for her.  She got to her feet and found herself scooped up in the fiercest hug she’d ever gotten.  She laughed into his neck and hugged him back just as hard.

“It’s good to see you, Barbie,” Roy said, when he finally put her down.  “Thanks for saving our bacon out there.”

She looked at him fondly.  “Glad I could help,” she said.  “But I’m sure you guys would have worked it out, even without me.”

“Well I’m glad we didn’t have to,” he replied before moving away to take off his quiver and gear.

Laurel came up to her next, wig and mask gone but still in her leathers, and hugged her quickly but warmly.

“Roy’s right,” Laurel said.  “You really did help us out there.  Thank you.”

Felicity smiled at her.  “You’re welcome.”

When Laurel moved away, there was Oliver, dressed in green, grease paint around his eyes.  Somehow, he was even more beautiful than Felicity remembered.

“Hi,” she said, in a voice far more breathy then she intended it to be.

“Hi,” he said back, lips quirking up into a bit of a smile.

She wondered, for a moment, what she should do, how she should greet him.  Her body, almost on its own accord, decided for her, moving her two steps closer and raising her arms to wrap around his neck before she realized she was doing it.

She hugged him, face pressed into the leather of his jacket, his arms wrapped around her back, and it was like her entire being exhaled.  She had to force herself to let go again and put some space between them.

“So Felicity,” Laurel’s voice sounded behind her and, for the first time since she saw him, Felicity tore her gaze away from Oliver.  “What brings you back to Starling?”

“Work,” Felicity answered.  “I’m overseeing a project at the Palmer Tech office here.  Digg said I should come by.  I hope that’s alright.”

“It’s always alright,” Roy said.

“Absolutely,” Oliver added.  “You’re always welcome here Felicity.”

Felicity smiled at both of them, her heart feeling so full she wondered if it would burst.

“Well,” Diggle said, coming to stand by Felicity, “we’ve had a successful mission, and a visit from an old friend, I say we celebrate.  Big Belly Burger?”

Felicity nodded her approval at the same time that Roy practically shouted “Yes! I’m starving.”  So Diggle and Felicity took a trip out to Big Belly Burger, picking up dinner while the other three changed out of their gear.  When they got back to the foundry, take out bags and drink trays in tow, they all gathered around one of the metal work tables to eat and chat.  There was a lot to catch up on, and while Felicity was sure that not everything in the last year had gone smoothly (because when does it ever?), they talked mostly about happy stories and she laughed more than she remembered doing in a long time and felt so wonderfully at ease that she never wanted the night to end.

It got later faster than she realized, and Digg had to bow out and head home, squeezing her shoulder and dropping a kiss on the top of her head before he left.  A little while later, Roy said he needed to head upstairs and help Thea close out the bar.  Before he left, he made Felicity promise that she would see them again before she went back to Coast City.  And then Laurel, unable to hide her yawns anymore, said she was headed out too.  She grabbed her coat and as she was putting it on, turned to Oliver and asked him “Should I expect you later?”

Felicity tried not to let the surprise show on her face.  Oliver, for his part, looked uncharacteristically awkward when he told Laurel that he would probably just head home.  And Laurel tried her best to look unaffected when she nodded and bid them goodnight.  Then it was just Oliver and Felicity and the quiet of the foundry reverberating around them.

“So,” Felicity said, trying to break the tension that she could feel building, “you and Laurel are back together?”

She tried to sound nonchalant as she asked the question, but on the inside her stomach began to churn.  She scolded herself for it.  Oliver was free to see anybody he wanted.

“Kinda,” was Oliver’s reply.

“Kinda?”  Felicity parroted back with an arched eyebrow.

Oliver balled up a burger wrapper and tossed it basketball style into a nearby bin before he totally avoided her question by asking one of his own.

“How are things with Ray?” he asked, his voice colder and tenser than it had been all evening.

Felicity clenched her jaw a little before pasting a smile on as she answered “Good.  We’re good. Everything’s fine.  It’s...steady.”

“Steady?” Oliver asked, and it was his turn to arch a brow.

“Yeah,” was all she answered.

They were both quiet for a moment and Felicity tried to look anywhere but at Oliver, until his voice drew her back.

“Are you happy?” he asked, his tone so sincere it melted her a little.

The question surprised her, and she was sure it must have shown on her face.  But maybe what surprised her most was that she didn’t know how to answer it. 

Then the next thing she knew, she was moving, and Oliver was moving, and they met in the middle in a clash of lips and hands and desperation. His fingers cupped her face angling her mouth the way he wanted it, and hers slid under his t-shirt and brushed over skin she had wanted to touch for as long as she could remember.  They kissed like they were drowning, like this was the last thing either of them would ever get to do.  It was hard and it was frantic, it made Felicity’s whole body hum.  And she never wanted it to stop.

But eventually she needed air, they both did, and Oliver tore his mouth away from hers.  She gasped an inhale and her chest was heaving, and she noticed his was too.  His eyes were closed and she could tell by the tight set of his jaw that he was trying to control himself.  When his eyes opened again, she saw so many emotions swirling in them it made her head spin.

“We should stop,” she said, her voice shaky.

He nodded, but he didn’t move away, and neither did she.

“You’re with Laurel,” she continued, breath still panting, “I’m with Ray.”  She knew she should be moving away from him, instead she was fisting her hands into his t-shirt, and his were moving into her hair.

“We really should stop,” she said one more time, voice a whisper, eyes boring into his, trying to convince herself that it was true.  She couldn’t.  And this time when they came together, they didn’t stop.  And they didn’t leave the foundry until morning.


	4. Chapter 4

When Oliver woke up that morning, it was like a thousand fantasies come true.  He was lying, naked, on the cot in the foundry, the one Felicity bought for him a lifetime ago, and she was with him, equally naked, and asleep.  The number of times he had wanted this to happen were uncountable, but because of one big reason it never did.  He had decided he couldn’t be with her, and then she left him to be with someone else.

But then yesterday, she came back.  And every wall he had built up around his feelings for her collapsed.  How exactly they had ended up in bed together was a bit of a blur, because as soon as she started kissing him, touching him, he was lost.  They came together and it was explosive, it was mind blowing.  And it probably shouldn’t have happened.

Oliver wasn’t exactly sure what to expect when Felicity woke up, but he knew, that like so many other facets of his life, that it was bound to be complicated.  He was right.

She woke up with a bit of a start, unsure of where she was.  She put one hand into her hair as she looked around, and Oliver could tell that the pieces of last night were falling back into place in her head.  When her gaze flitted over him, he held his breath.

The first thing she said was “I have to get to work.”

And then she was up, gathering clothes that were strewn on the floor.  Oliver sat up, blanket pooled around his waist, unable to keep himself from watching her.  He knew he should say something, knew they should talk.  He had a hundred thoughts swarming around in his head, but all he managed to come out with was “Felicity...”

She only shook her head, pulled her dress on and said again, “I have to go.”  Then her heels were clicking against the foundry steps as she made her way to the door, and all Oliver could bring himself to do was watch her go.

He’s not sure how long he stayed there, naked on the cot that had once been his only bed.  But eventually, he got up, pulled on his own clothes and headed home.

Home for Oliver was a one bedroom apartment in a moderately respectable neighbourhood in the South End.  It was a far cry from the Queen mansion or Thea’s luxury loft, but he earned it on his own and he was proud of that.  As much as he loved Thea, seeing, and sometimes hearing, her with Roy was getting awkward.  Oliver liked Roy, and he had nothing against their relationship, but as a big brother, he just didn’t want to think about his sister like that.  Ever.  So, for the first time in his life, he chose his own place to live.  It was small but comfortable, and arguably a little sparse (interior decorating had never been his thing).  It suited Oliver just fine, and he was the only one who really spent any time there.  Sometimes Digg would come over for a beer, or his sister would come by to pick him up, but that was it.  Laurel had never spent the night.  They might be having sex but they didn’t stay together afterwards.  Last night had been the first time in a long time he had slept next to someone.  Last night had been the first time in a long time that he’d even wanted to.

It should have been weird or distracting, hearing Felicity’s voice come through the comms again.  But it wasn’t.  Instead, it just felt...right.  It grounded him, gave him sharper focus, and a sense of what could almost be described as peace, as if everything was now right in the world with her in his ear again.  The day she left, an ache had erupted in Oliver’s chest and for the entire year that she had been gone, it didn’t ebb, he’d just learned to live with it, like he lived with the dull pain in his once broken knee.  But last night, when he’d come back to the foundry and she’d hugged him and he felt her hair against his cheek, when they’d talked and laughed and eaten salty fast food, when they’d kissed and touched and made love, that ache, it disappeared.  Watching her leave this morning, her eyes avoiding him as she scurried away as fast as she could, that brought some of the ache back.  He wondered if she regretted their night together.  He knew that he never would.

Lying across his couch with the television on for distraction, he tried to fall asleep again.  He still had a few more hours before he had to meet Thea at the club.  But he was torn between wanting to drift off and wanting to remember every moment of his night with Felicity while the memories were still fresh and vivid.  In the end he did a little of both.  Then he got up, showered and changed and went to start his work day at Verdant.  When he got there, he was holding two take out cups.  One black coffee for him, one chai latte for Thea.  He found her at the bar, tallying up last night’s takings.

"Are we still in the black?”  he said in a teasing tone.

“Yup,” Thea said, reaching out to take the cup he offered her, “though not as black as last month.  We might need to host an event or a theme party or something, get people talking about us again.”

“Whatever you think,” Oliver answered.  “You’re the brains of this operation.”

“That’s right,” she replied with a smirk.  “And you’re the brawn.  So if you could bring out the heavy boxes of liquor to restock the bar, that would be great.”

“Sure,” he said, moving around to the back of the bar.  He started to make note of what was there and what wasn’t.  They worked in silence for a few moments before Thea said “Roy tells me Felicity is back in town.”

Oliver started a little at the mention of her name.  He tried to sound nonchalant when he answered.  “Yeah,” he said, purposefully not looking at Thea when he did.  “She’s overseeing some project at Palmer Tech.  She stopped by the basement last night.”

“It must have been nice to see her again,” Thea said.  Her tone was innocent enough, but Oliver got the distinct impression he was being baited.

"Yeah we all had a good time,” he answered

“Is she still with that other guy?”

This time, Oliver knew he didn’t keep the tension out of his voice when he answered, “Yes.”

“Hmm,” was all Thea said in response. 

Oliver waited for a moment, to see if Thea was done goading him with questions, before he returned to his task.  Well, more correctly, he started over again.  Somewhere, in the midst of Thea’s questioning, he’d gotten distracted.

He worked the rest of his time upstairs at Verdant before heading downstairs, where he sharpened arrows and impaled tennis balls and otherwise kept himself distracted until, one by one, the rest of his team filed in for the night.  He didn’t figure she would show up again tonight, but he couldn’t stop himself from hoping with every person down the stairs that he’d see glasses and a blond ponytail.  But Felicity didn’t come, and he suited up and went out with Diggle’s voice on the comms instead of hers and he couldn’t deny how disappointed he felt.  In some ways, it felt like losing her all over again.

But this time, she wasn’t gone.  She was still here, in his city, and with a few quick searches from Team Arrow’s computer system, he knew he could find her.  So that’s what he did and before he could talk himself out of it, he was standing outside her hotel room door in the middle of the night.

He wanted to talk with her.  He didn’t want to leave things the way they had that morning.  That was, at least, the logical explanation that his brain came up with as to why he needed to see her.  He knocked, unsure that she would hear him and even less sure that she would let him in if she did.  But she opened the door with sleep tossed hair and cupcake pajama pants.  She blinked when she saw him said a confused “Oliver?”

His heart filled when he saw her and part of him still couldn’t believe that, after all this time, she was really in front of him again.

“I needed to see you,” he confessed.

She didn’t balk at him, or shut the door in his face.  She didn’t point out that it was the middle of the night and she had been asleep and he could have waited until the morning.  Instead, she quietly stepped aside and let him come in.

In his mind, there were so many things he wanted to say.  He wanted to tell her what it felt like to hear her voice again, to hear her laugh.  He wanted to tell her how the foundry had never felt quite the same since she left, but that last night, it felt alive in a way that it hadn’t in some time.  He wanted to tell her that he couldn’t stop thinking about them being together, that it had been even more amazing than he imagined it would be, and he wanted to know what it meant. 

He wanted to say all of those things and, maybe, in some ways he did, when he gently cupped her face in his hands and kissed her.  And when instead of pushing him away Felicity kissed him back, he thought that, just maybe, in some ways, she understood. 

               

 


	5. Chapter 5

Felicity awoke to the familiar tones of her cell phone’s alarm.  It was supposed to sound like wind chimes or something but the sounds were more sharp than soothing.  She pried her eyes open, they were heavy and tired, she hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep (but really, she’d functioned that way for years so, by this point, it was nothing she couldn’t handle).  She reached a hand over, fumbled to turn off the alarm, then rolled over again in her hotel bed to come face to face with the reason her eyes were so tired. 

Oliver was lying next to her, his eyes open and alert (which probably happened the second Felicity’s alarm sounded) as he regarded her with a mixed expression.  If Felicity had to put a name to it, she would say that Oliver looked...unsure.  She really couldn’t blame him, since the last time they had woken up together she sort of freaked out. 

That first morning, she was still shocked, she still couldn’t quite believe that their whole night together had happened.  They’d managed to work together for years and, despite the attraction they shared, they had never collided like they did two nights ago in the foundry.  That sex had been intense and needy and oh so amazing, and it had taken her aback.  Last night, however, she let him in, knowing full well that it might move in this direction.  And when it did, she didn’t try to stop it.  She just let the undeniable pull between them have its way.  Maybe she was out of practice fighting it.

Now, in the light of day, she knew they should talk about it.  She wasn’t exactly sure what she should say, she wasn’t even exactly sure what she _wanted_ to say, but she knew she had to say something.  So she gave him a small smile, took a breath, and started in.

“Soooo,” she said, drawing out the word, “this keeps happening.”

Oliver huffed out a laugh that she didn’t entirely know how to read, then replied only with “Yeah.”

“I suppose it’s not entirely unexpected,” she said, feeling a ramble coming on.  “I mean, we were close, we were attracted to each other, and I guess we still are.  But, it’s crazy that we keep doing this, because my life is in Coast City now and yours is here, and it’s not like that’s going to change.  So this,” she gestured back and forth between the two of them, “it shouldn’t happen again.  Right?”

Her voice had trailed up at the end of her ramble, belying an uncertainty that she shouldn’t be feeling.

Oliver studied her face for a moment, his gaze soft but serious.  He had rolled onto his elbow to face her and the sheet had fallen down from his chest, revealing the marred skin and chiselled muscle.  She couldn’t help but remember what it had felt like to finally get to run her hands over him, to feel him under her fingertips.

“Felicity, I would never want you to do anything you weren’t comfortable with,” he replied.

“Ok,” she said, satisfied that they were on the same page, and eager to stop looking deeper into their situation.  “Good.”

She rolled over then, pulling a sheet with her to wrap around her body once she got out of bed.  “I’m going to go shower, get ready for work.  You can stay, sleep some more, if you’d like.”  The offer felt awkward, even to her ears.  He gave her a small, somewhat sad, smile.

“No, I’ll get out of here, give you some privacy.”

She nodded then, and started towards the bathroom.  Just before she got there, he called for her.

“Felicity?”

“Yeah?” she said as she turned to face him.

“Whatever has happened between us, I hope you’ll still come by the foundry.  Roy is so excited you’re here, and Thea’s been asking about you and we just...” he trailed off for a second before he continued, “we just miss you around the Arrow Cave.”

She blinked at him before she smirked and replied, “I thought you didn’t call it that.”

Oliver gave a shrug.  “I guess you rubbed off on me,” he said.

She laughed at that, a genuine smile gracing her face, but she didn’t answer him one way or the other.  Instead she disappeared into the bathroom and started getting ready for work.  When she came out again, showered with her hair wrapped in a towel, Oliver was gone.  She looked at the empty bed and rumpled sheets and felt a pang of something in her stomach.  It felt remarkably like longing.

She walked over and snatched her phone from the bedside table.  She noticed she had missed a call from Ray and for the first time it actually occurred to her that she was cheating on her boyfriend.  The thought didn’t faze her as much as it should have. 

She decided she’d call Ray back once she got to the office, but once she was there and settled in, she decided it would probably be better to wait until lunch time.  When lunch time rolled around, she decided to send him an email instead.  He was probably in the middle of something by now, she reasoned, and she wouldn’t want to disturb him.

Felicity worked late that day, she had been in the middle of debugging some code and she didn’t want to stop until it was finished.  By the time she was done she was alone in the office and she realized offhandedly that ‘alone’ was how she spent most of her day.  It wasn’t that she didn’t see people (she made small talk with various people throughout the day), it wasn’t that she didn’t know people (she had worked in this office for a year after all) but they weren’t her friends, they weren’t people she looked forward to seeing, people that made her happy.  The thought struck Felicity harder than she expected and suddenly she couldn’t stand the idea of being alone for another minute.  She didn’t want to eat dinner by herself then hideaway in an empty hotel room, she wanted her friends.  And, luckily, she was in the city where her best ones happened to live.

When Felicity arrived at Verdant she had a party sized tray of sushi in tow.  Roy greeted her with a kiss on the cheek and, as he took the tray from her hands told her “I could get used to this Barbie” with a teasing smile.  She hugged Digg, gave a friendly wave to Laurel, and then spied Oliver across the room.  He didn’t move towards her, but he smiled at her and her heart skipped a beat and she knew that he was happy she had come.  She smiled back, because she was happy she had come too.

They pretty much re-enacted the dinner they’d shared the first night she stepped back into their basement, with lots of easy laughs and happiness to go around.  Only this time, when it was over, Felicity seamlessly moved to her old workstation and started running searches and helping them prep for that night’s mission.  If anybody thought that was strange, they didn’t say it.  In fact, everyone just fell into step, they picked up their old rhythms like it had only been a day, not a year, since Felicity had been with them. 

She kept coming to the foundry after that, every day after she finished at Palmer Tech.  It was so easy to fall into her old routine, into her old friendships, into her old life.  Before too long, she came to realize that the feeling she had had days before, that feeling of being alone, it extended beyond her business trip and could be used to describe her whole life in Coast City.  She had friends, yes, but when she compared what she had with them to the friendship she had with Diggle and Roy, with Oliver, they seemed so...shallow.  Even her connections with Laurel and Thea seemed deeper, because they were built on a shared history that was as tragic as it was amazing.  She had been worried that Team Arrow wouldn’t want her back, that being with them again would be strange and uncomfortable.  She was so glad that she had been wrong.

She hadn’t slept with Oliver again, not since that night in her hotel room.  The two of them had fallen into a surprisingly easy rapport.  It reminded her of the relationship they’d had before their disastrous date, before he told her that he couldn’t be with her.  But there were looks between them that were perhaps more loaded than they had been before.  Sometimes, when he looked at her, Felicity felt the heat of it down to her toes.  And more than once, he had caught her gaze on him, lingering over his chest or his mouth. 

It was all too obvious to Felicity that her feelings for Oliver never went away, they had just been ...bottled.  Not seeing him every day had made them easier to ignore.  But even then, if she’d read an article about Starling City’s Arrow, or see a news piece about the speculated return of Queen Consolidated, her heart would flutter, the bottle would shake.  And now, being with him again, those feelings were all bursting to get out, like champagne under pressure.

It was also all too easy to forget about Coast City, about Ray, to pretend that she never left Starling.  It was easy to forget all the reasons that kept her and Oliver from being together, to forget that he broke her heart.  So when Oliver drove her back to her hotel one night after their dinner at John and Lyla’s, when her heart was full of happiness and her face was flushed with wine, she asked him if he’d like to come up to her room.  When he said yes, they only made it as far as the elevator before she jumped him. 

She had stopped thinking about the reasons why she shouldn’t have this with him.  Yes, it was only temporary, and in a week, this wonderful bubble she’d created for herself would be over.  But it was hers for now, the dream she never thought would come true. 

And she was taking it. 


	6. Chapter 6

During her last week in Starling City, Oliver was with Felicity every night.  He wasn’t exactly sure what caused her change of heart.  He asked her, of course, and she gave him a flippant comment about good sex and he didn’t push her for anything more.  Truth be told, he was scared that if they really talked about what they were doing then they’d stop.  And he didn’t want it to stop.  Because with Felicity, his world was brighter and he felt lighter in a way he hadn’t for a long time.

Felicity came to the foundry each night and took her spot behind her computers.  When Oliver geared up and the Arrow went out into the night, it was her voice that guided him and when he came back, it was her that he looked for first, and his heart swelled every time he saw her there.  Then, in what had become their orchestrated routine, Felicity would shut down her computers, say her goodbyes and head back to her hotel room, and Oliver would shower and change then hop on his bike and race over to see her.  Maybe the others suspected what was happening, but he didn’t care.  He wasn’t going to stop until she asked him to.

He hadn’t been with Laurel since he’d seen Felicity again and, although this new arrangement with Laurel had always been casual, apparently his absence from it hadn’t gone unnoticed. 

“You haven’t come around in a while,” she said to him one night on a rooftop while they were waiting for Roy to get into position.  He didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything.

“Is it Felicity?” Laurel asked him, and his breath caught for a second in his chest.

“Are you worried about what she’ll think?” Laurel continued, and he knew then that she didn’t know and he calmed again, but he still didn’t respond.

"Look, Oliver,” she grabbed his arm this time, forcing his attention to her.  “I know you care about her, but it’s really none of her business what we do.”

Oliver swallowed, the words brushing over him like sandpaper. ‘Care about her’ seemed so...wrong, like his feelings for her were that small, that simple.  ‘Care about her’ didn’t even come close to how he felt. 

Then Roy’s voice came over the comms and it was time for them to move and Laurel, thankfully, let it go.  Laurel, he decided, could think whatever she wanted about his absence.  They weren’t really in a relationship, he told himself, he didn’t owe her any explanations.

Oliver spent all the time he could with Felicity, he drank up every second of it because he knew that it was going to end.  She’d never given him any declarations in their time together, never told him she would leave Ray or Coast City, and he’d never given any to her.  But on her last night in Starling, while Oliver lay half under the hotel comforter, with the taste of her still on his tongue, and watched her pack her suitcase, he finally said the one thing he’d been thinking since he saw her again.

“Stay.”

Her head snapped up to him, her eyes wide with surprise.  Her voice had an edge when she answered “I can’t.”

“Why?” he countered, his voice taking on an edge of its own.

“Because I left.”

“Yeah,” Oliver said with a bitterness in his tone that he couldn’t help, “I remember.”

Anger flashed across Felicity’s face and she marched over to him.  “No!” she said.  “You don’t get to put the all blame on me.  I may have been the one to leave, but you were the one who pushed me there.”

He didn’t shy away from her gaze.  “I couldn’t – ”

She cut him off.  “Be with someone you really cared about.  I know, I’ve heard it before.” she said bitterly.  “Except, of course, for Sara.  Oh, and now Laurel.”  Her ire raised with every sentence, and so did the volume of her voice.  “So, what? You couldn’t be with anyone you cared about unless their last name was Lance? Explain that to me!”

“I never loved them like I love you!” he answered, voice as loud and angry as hers.  “I've never loved anybody the way I love you!  It’s...all consuming.  And I know that if we started, I couldn’t live without you!”

The weight of his words settled in the air between them and, for a moment, they were both quiet.  Felicity’s face, her eyes, softened, and it made Oliver push forward.  

“This thing with Laurel?” he said.  “It was just sex.”

“And that’s the problem Oliver,” she said, her voice a mixture of anger and sadness.  “You won’t let yourself be with someone in the ways that really matter.  I don’t want just sex, I want a relationship. I want to build a life with someone.”

“Like Ray?” he replied angrily, and at the mention of Ray’s name he saw her flinch.  It made him lash out even more.  “Then why are you sleeping with me?”

Her face was hard but her voice was quiet when she answered. “Because I wanted those things with you,” she said.

She walked past him and into the bathroom where she shut the door behind her.  She didn’t need to tell him out loud that she expected him to leave.

Oliver made his way back to his apartment, weaving his bike through mostly empty streets.  Part of him was angry that he’d ruined his last night with her, that they wouldn’t get to make love again, that he wouldn’t wake up beside her one last time.  But another part of him knew that he would have regretted it if he'd never even asked her to stay, that he would have always wondered ‘what if?’.

As Oliver laid alone on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, he tried not to count the hours Felicity had left in Starling City, tried not to think about her plane leaving, carrying her away to another life.  He tried not to think about how dull the world would look again, about the ache that would bloom in his chest.  He tried not to think about how, with her back in his life, he had been happy.

For the first time in a long time, he didn’t want to go to the foundry.  He knew that, like the first time she left, Felicity’s absence would echo off the walls, making every corner seem empty and grey.  He knew he wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding how he felt when Digg handed him a comm once he was suited up and said “I’ll do my best.”  Oliver clapped him on the shoulder then.  It wasn’t that Diggle wasn’t good at manning the computer station, it was just that he wasn’t Felicity.

He broke things off with Laurel, telling her, in perhaps the most honest conversation they’d ever had, that he had been sleeping with her for all the wrong reasons, and that it wasn’t fair for him to continue.  She was angry at first, but after a little while she came around, and told him she understood.  She also told him, with nothing but sincerity, that one day, she hoped he’d allow himself to be happy.

Two years ago, Oliver made a choice, and then Felicity made hers.  He had picked the Arrow, and she picked Ray.  Whether they were right choices or wrong ones, they were what he had to live with.  He had done it before, he could do it again.

 


	7. Chapter 7

It wasn’t the fact that leaving Starling City caused a physical ache in her chest.

It wasn’t the fact that when she got back to her new lab, to her new friends, that nobody greeted her with the same unrestrained warmth that Roy or Diggle had when she saw them in Starling.

It wasn’t the fact that the expensive penthouse apartment she lived in felt cold and foreign, even though she’d only been away for two weeks.

What finally convinced Felicity that she had made a mistake, was seeing Ray again for the first time. 

When she locked herself in her hotel bathroom the night before, waiting for Oliver to leave, she had been furious.  For the past week, she had been living a wonderful fantasy.  She was in Starling, she was back with her family, and she had Oliver.  And then he had to go and ruin it by asking her to stay, and reminding her of all the reasons why it had never worked, all the reasons she chose to leave, all the reasons it wasn’t real.

Just because they had sex, it didn’t mean that anything between them was going to change.  It didn’t mean that he would let her in.

So she left, like she had a year ago, for Coast City, and for Ray.  But once she made it there, it didn’t take her long to realize that she couldn’t stay.  Because seeing Ray again for the first time?  It felt nothing like it did when she saw Oliver. 

Seeing Ray didn’t make the whole world seem like it was coming into focus.  He didn’t make her heart beat faster or cause a flutter of anticipation in her stomach.  Seeing Ray didn’t make her feel like she was home. 

She cared for Ray, he was brilliant and kind and loving.  He was an amazing person in so many ways.  And that was why she had to end it.  Because he deserved better than a women who was in love with someone else.

It was the second hardest thing she ever had to do.

She didn’t know what to say, how to start, how to make it hurt less.  Ultimately, she went with honesty, maybe too much honesty; the look that crossed his face when she told him she had slept with Oliver broke her heart. 

“So you’re leaving me for him,” Ray said as a statement, not a question.  His voice was coated with a bitterness she couldn’t blame him for.

“I don’t know what will happen between Oliver and I,” she answered truthfully.  “But I do know that I can’t stay here and pretend that I don’t love him.”

She told him she could stay in a hotel until she moved her stuff out.  He said she could have the run of the place and he’d stay at the office.  The truth was that neither of them wanted to be in that apartment just then.

Ray told her that her job at Palmer Tech was still hers if she wanted it, saying he had hired her because she was the best, not because they were sleeping together.  It was a selfless offer, but she couldn’t accept it, couldn’t put him in that position.  She’d find something else to do.

They didn’t know she was coming back.  Felicity wasn’t quite sure what to tell them.  Sending Team Arrow an email explaining that she was leaving Ray because she realized she was still hopelessly in love with Oliver didn’t seem like the way to go.  And telling them that they were her family and that she’d never felt more loved or accepted anywhere else?  That was something she’d rather do in person.  So when her plane landed in Starling City just days after she’d left, Felicity slipped back into to her city unannounced.

She’d looked up his address before she left.  As much as Oliver Queen might try to keep his home address off the radar, there wasn’t a lot of information out there that Felicity couldn’t find if she put her mind to it, and this one wasn’t even a challenge.  She drove there straight from the airport, slowly maneuvering through the neighbourhood in her rental car, circling the block way too many times before she worked up the nerve to park the car and walk to his building.  A woman was coming out of the front door, her arms full of boxes.  Felicity trotted up the steps to grab the door for her, then used the opportunity to slip into Oliver’s building without buzzing through the intercom. 

She stared at the outside of his door, hands stuck in the pockets of her trench coat, for a least a minute before she knocked.  When he opened the door, the surprise on his face was evident.

“Felicity,” he said with disbelief in his voice.  “What are you doing here?”

The bluntness of his question almost made her laugh.  It cut some of the tension she was feeling.

“I realized I never got to see your place,” she said.

“I thought you went back to Coast City.”

“I did,” she said, before she took a breath and added “but it didn’t take me long to figure out that I didn’t belong there.”

Oliver just looked at her, his expression almost slack-jawed.  She might have found it adorable if she wasn’t rehearsing everything she wanted to tell him in her head.

“Can I come in?” she asked.

The question seemed to knock him out of his stupor and he took a step back to let her through.  They walked into his living room, her eyes scanning the space.  It was nice, a little bare, but nice.  And somehow, it just felt like Oliver.

“Thanks,” she heard from behind her, and it took her a second to realize that she’d made her observations out loud.  She turned around and smiled at him sheepishly.

"Why aren’t you in Coast City?” Oliver asked.  This time, the question was more curious than blunt. 

“Because I wanted to come home,” she answered.

“To Starling?”

“To everything,” she said.  “The city, the foundry, the team, everything.  For a year, I tried to build a life somewhere else and it never felt right.  One trip back to Starling City and I figured out why.  Because this is the place where I fit.  And the life that I want, is with you.  And I know that you didn’t make me any promises, I understand that, but -  ”

The slant of his lips over hers cut her off.  She had been so focused on what she was trying to say, that she hadn’t even seen him move.  One second, he was across the room, and the next, his hands were in her hair and he was kissing her for all he was worth.  After an instant of surprise, she was kissing him back just as hard.

When they finally pulled apart, both dreamy eyed and panting for air, Oliver whispered “I want my life to be with you, too.”

Felicity couldn’t help the smile that split her face then, and Oliver beamed back at her before pulling her closer and kissing her once more. 

Hours later, when they were curled up together in Oliver’s bed, sleepy and sated, he pressed his nose into her hair and told her that he’d never stopped loving her.  And she told him that she knows now that she never stopped either. 

In the end, Felicity’s new life in Starling City was, in a lot of ways, similar to her old one.  She still spent her nights in the Arrow Cave working, in her way, to make the city a better place.  She still spent her days at a job that she loved, and she still surrounded herself with the friends that had become her family.

But now, instead of working in a big, glass-paneled office building downtown, she worked from her office in the home that she and Oliver bought together as the sole employee of her own computer security company. 

And her left hand?  It now hosted a simple gold band that Oliver put there one afternoon at the Starling City courthouse, while her mother and Thea and team Arrow enthusiastically cheered them on.

               


End file.
